What decentralization means to me

Decentralization#

A story#

I’ve been fascinated by the internet since I was a small child using my uncle’s old ThinkPad, when I ruined the Windows installation by installing 400 different cursors¹.

Slowly, as I grew up, I watched the internet change from a place where anything was possible to a place where such an idea seems quaint and unlikely. This process seemingly happened all at once, but I believe that’s partly to do with the fact that these websites that run our lives² weren’t originally walled gardens where data was hoarded. They were still taking that data, sure, but others outside of the website could leverage that data as well for things like integrations or interoperability. People much more eloquent and experienced than me have been documenting and researching this phenomenon since the internet’s inception, and I believe Cory Doctorow’s term “enshittification”³ is an important aspect to this. However, there are new technologies being leveraged on the internet that can seem positive and to be improvements over the current internet, but will either never actually become a part of the internet in a meaningful way or are merely tools being used by those who want the centralization of power for themselves.

Different definitions#

“Decentralized” is a buzz-word that is prevalent all over the web when it comes to new technologies. However, this word can mean two very different things depending on who’s using it. What’s worse, it can be very difficult to determine who the person using the word is. Decentralized services sound like a good thing, right? When we imagine the word, it sounds fantastic, promising an open and free internet; however, the advent of Blockchain has made it apparent that decentralization does not necessarily promote equality among netizens. To be clear, I am not suggesting all blockchain technologies or services are inherently bad. I am merely drawing attention to the fact that “decentralized” as a term has had its image tarnished because of the many, many, scams and scandals that have come out of the cryptocurrency space. Again, for those in the back, I am not saying that all blockchain projects are bad.

I believe the fact that these terms have been linked in a strong way to one another has made it harder to convince non-technologically inclined persons (NTIP⁴) to give legitimate and well supported decentralized platforms a try. What can make this sell even harder is that we have people on the crypto side attempting to support and foster growth for these other projects as well. Again, I don’t think this is necessarily bad, but I believe the negative reputation crypto⁵ has developed has started to rub off on all decentralized services, not just things attached to Logan Paul or whoever’s currently running a pump and dump coin.

Outside of blockchain technologies, there exists a plethora of other decentralized services. Without looking for more, I can name libre.fm⁶, Mastodon, and PeerTube. These services are designed to be resilient, configurable, and support the idea that, if you don’t like your current instance⁷, you can take it and move to another instance without losing everything and having to start over. Instances are managed by people, a team, a company, or a variety of other organizational indentifiers. These organizations can manage things like how content is moderated, terms of service, and privacy policies. If an instance changes suddenly or becomes defunct, you can move with minimal effort.

These two different types of decentralization can commingle as well, a concept which can be challenging to explain to an NTIP. Blockchain technologies typically run off of some sort of peer-to-peer protocol, but I’m not as invested in this technology as I used to be for a number of reasons. These protocols can be a security nightmare, and also complicate an already complicated process for an NTIP. Web3 is an interesting idea, and I’m all for new standards, but I’m concerned it will never mature enough to encourage people to shift from the current internet⁸ to a completely different paradigm. I’m sure I’ve scared away any hiring manager that might be working for a crypto company now, but that’s okay. I’m not willing to lie about how I feel when it comes to technology. I won’t sugar-coat it. At the end of the day, I’m more than willing to change my mind if these technologies develop differently than I expect them to, but I’m not holding my breath.

A tangent on the concept of Anarchy#

The idea I’d like to share regarding decentralized technology mimics a lot of “political theory”⁹ regarding how Anarchists treat Anarcho-Capitalists (AnCaps) in their circles. AnCaps are, according to Anarchists, a walking contradiction.

The philosophy around Anarchism is primarily focused on the idea that hierarchies are inherently bad, and should be avoided or dismantled whenever they crop up. No, Anarchists aren’t all wearing Guy Fawkes masks and attempting to commit terrorism. Crazy, right? It also doesn’t mean “no government and no rules.” In fact, Anarchism as a political philosophy is really just an umbrella term. Once hierarchies have been dismantled¹⁰, there are many different ideas about how society could be restructured. For example, Noam Chomsky, one of the most well-known Anarchist academics, is an Anarcho-Syndicalist, generally meaning he is in favor of setting up trade unions that would span the gamut of trades, interacting with each other to provide social services, laws, and regulation. Doesn’t sound so scary, now does it? Anarchy as a concept has been vilified by most modern societies because of a lack of knowledge surrounding it, and because the deconstruction of hierarchy would necessarily create temporary destabilization of our vital institutions.

Capitalism is a hierarchical system, and therefore is diametrically opposed to Anarchism.

Wolves in decentralized clothing#

I think a big part of why cryptocurrency has taken over decentralization as a concept is due to the kinds of people that support cryptocurrencies. In fact, I suspect many of them are AnCaps. The line between decentralization and the abolition of hierarchies is paper-thin. It’s more or less a straight line, but not oft discussed. Cryptocurrency and blockchain are decentralized, and yet the most notable scams, failures, and successes are typically related to exchanges. Binance, Coinbase, and FTX are some of the more notable exchanges. FTX is defunct, and in its death throes stirred up significant public controversy, mostly surrounding the suite of conmen at the top. Coinbase, as far as I’m aware, has managed to avoid any serious issues and, from my perspective, is the most reputable exchange currently available. Binance seems to be a magnet for drama, and regularly adds support for new coins and tokens. Many smaller exchanges end up dying quickly, unable to compete. Outside of the obvious legal issues of which some of these exchanges run afoul, they all break on of the fundamental building blocks of cryptocurrency and blockchain: decentralization. I could probably dive into the concept of ethereum tokens and how things like smart contracts and other blockchain features also end up defeating the purpose of decentralization by centralizing power in one form or another, but I don’t really want to make this any longer than it needs to be. Really, I think if you’re aware of the buzz-words I just used, you can probably draw the lines yourself. They more or less all end up being centralized in some way by one person or organization. If you look at many of the crypto scams that plague the internet, most of them end up being created by people who continue to hold onto the majority of the supply for their crypto or token, use influencers to pump the price, and then sell their stock before it dumps.

The people who are trying to centralize inside of cryptocurrency are just attempting to shift the centralization from one organization or person to another. They’re not a part of the 1% and they resent that fact. Rather than trying to redistribute that wealth and power to the masses, they’re leveraging the concept of populism to give themselves a leg up on disrupting the status quo and then replacing it with a more complex and environmentally worse facsimile. Replacing Wells Fargo with Coinbase doesn’t really do anything for the layperson. It just makes Coinbase founder X more wealthy and potentially¹¹ bankrupts the owners of Wells Fargo. Cryptocurrency doesn’t end up changing anything, and yet it promises everything. You still end up needing all of these additional central sources of control and power in order for it to work, and then the guy who makes it gets rich off of making what amounts to a worse version of the stock exchange.

In a way, attempting to decentralize the financial industry is really just a microcosm of what anarchy seeks to do, but with an economic system that’s naturally predisposed to hierarchy and centralization. The capitalist is the epitome of hierarchy; they have the power and capital to do what they want, and the laborers only have power and capital to potentially control their own material conditions. Sometimes (most times, let’s be honest), they don’t even have that! Ignoring the intangibles that power and capital provide someone is in part why people can convince themselves that laborers are capable of becoming capitalists. This, I suppose, also turns into a discussion of how Capitalism naturally creates the idea of zero sum. Not everyone can become a capitalist; who would labor to provide profit for them? Regardless of how it is theoretically “fair” and “possible” for everyone to own their own business and means of production, that’s not the case. The capitalists are incentivized to exert their power over laborers to ensure that they always have laborers over which to exert power. It is a self-perpetuating cycle.

All of this is to say: if you believe that financial centralization is the problem, you should believe that hierarchies are the problem. There’s really not much of a difference between the two, and trying to decouple decentralization from anarchy is going to require a lot of cognitive dissonance to reconcile.

A final warning: you should be wary of people who spout pretty buzz-words. It is easy to trust them just because you are interpreting their use of those words charitably and not because they are sincerely well-meaning individuals. Much like capitalism, financial institutions are predisposed to consolidating power within the hands of whoever runs them, and you shouldn’t give them that power without really understanding what they want to do with it.

Supplemental media#

Watching#

1. Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs

2. This is Financial Advice

3. The Future is a Dead Mall - Decentraland and the Metaverse

4. Intro to Anarchism– Q & Anarchy Episode 0